I'm happy to take on the position of editor in chief of IJMO. It's a journal that shows promise of becoming a recognized journal in the area of modelling and optimization. I'll work together with the editors to help it progress.

Travel Mode Choice in Presence of HOT Lane in Tehran

Amir Samimi, Yalda Rahmati, and Hassan Sadeghi

Abstract—Transportation often becomes the subject of controversy related to choice of mode as well as increased capacity, because of the inevitable negative impacts of transportation systems, among which congestion and environmental pollution are of a great concern,. Population growth and the increase in number of vehicles per capita have made it clear that infrastructure developments cannot be the only solution to avoid these impacts. Hence, the need for travel demand management (TDM) policies has now become urgent to reduce car usage and solve the traffic problems. One of the main approaches is introducing high occupancy toll lanes. The main purpose of this study is to model user’s mode choice behavior in the presence of high occupancy toll lane and pricing some highway lanes in Tehran. Through a stated preference survey, respondents are given 3 alternatives and asked to choose their preferred travel mode: 1) SOV users pay the toll and use HOT lanes, 2) HOV users use HOT lanes for free, and 3) SOV users use general-purpose lanes for free. Multinomial logit model (MNL) is adapted separately for "Go" and "Back" trips to predict users' mode choice behavior in the presence of HOT lanes. Age, gender, household size, travel time, flexibility of departure time, trip frequency, number of highways used in the trip and the amount of HOT toll are among the factors that have significant impact on mode choice decisions. Elasticity analysis is also performed to explore the effect of some variables on mode choice and to obtain a better policy perspective. Results indicate that users are more sensitive toward changes in variables in their "Go" trips, and "toll amount" is the most effective variable on users' mode choice decisions.

Index Terms—High occupancy lane, Logit model, Tehran toll.

The authors are with the Department of Civil Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran (e-mail: asamimi@sharif.edu, yalda.rahmati@tamu.edu, hassadeghi7@gmail.com)